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Psalm 102http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/07/27/psalm-102/
http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/07/27/psalm-102/#commentsMon, 27 Jul 2015 12:00:00 +0000http://embodiedtorah.com/?p=810Continue reading →]]>I am like a great owl in the wilderness, an owl among the ruins. (102:7)

With big eyes, phenomenal night vision, and a neck that turns nearly 180 degrees, an owl watches over the ruins. The Psalmist envisions himself the owl, seeing everything but powerless to do anything to repair the damage.

When it comes to fixing the brokenness of the world around us, I empathize. I see hunger and homelessness, I see violence against women and children in the media, I see siblings, parents, and children who will not speak to one another. Most of the problems are beyond my capacity to solve, leaving me as the owl, seeing with powerless eyes.

I rode along with a police officer for several hours one night and watched as he made traffic stops, mostly of people who had a headlight or taillight burned out. All the while, I listened to the police dispatchers on the radio as they sent officers in another part of the city to calls of possible domestic violence and break-ins.

It reminded me of an Ethics and Religion Talk column I wrote a couple of years ago in which I argued that we have a moral duty to return shopping carts to the cart corral, in part because a parking lot in which I need to dodge an obstacle course of carts to find a parking place signifies that the business doesn’t care about the customers. The quiet act of returning a shopping cart speaks loudly about how much people in that neighborhood care about each other.

Similarly, the perhaps trivial act of making a traffic stop to warn the driver about a burned-out taillight reminds people in that community that they need to care for their vehicle, both for their own safety and for the safety of others. During one stop, I watched him make sure that a driver was sober and not experiencing any obvious health issues, before wishing him a safe drive home. At another point, I watched him assist a fellow officer after a traffic stop revealed drugs.

There is no such thing as a trivial act of repair. Failing to act leads to continued deterioration. Acting, even in a small way, upholds order and dignity. For this reason, one of the seven Noahide commandments is the obligation to live in a place which enforces a system of justice. Without it, society would devolve into chaos.

The Psalmist might see himself as simply a powerless watcher. Yet if he broke through his lethargy and acted, and if others in the community did the same, the ruins would soon be restored into a beautiful community.

Three thousand, five hundred years ago, the Psalmist longed for justice. We, in a world in which people are beaten and killed for the color of their skin, long for justice. Yet we still maintain our faith in God, sing songs praising God’s teachings, and study God’s Torah. The Divine message compels us to fight for justice when we see injustice.

Every once in a while we get a win. For those who believe in the justice of same-sex relationships, the Supreme Court’s acceptance of the right of same-sex couples to marry in all 50 states is nothing short of miraculous.

In 1996, President Clinton signed the “Defense of Marriage Act,” (DOMA) explicitly defining marriage as one man-one woman and restricting same-sex marriage benefits under federal law. It passed both houses of Congress with large majorities and enjoyed the support of a a significant majority of the American public. Only 19 years later, the majority of the American public supports the right of same-sex couples to marry and receive all of the rights and privileges of heterosexual couples under the law. What a remarkable about-face!

The fight isn’t over. Gay and lesbian individuals still face legal discrimination. They can be turned away from housing or fired for being gay. Sexual orientation does not enjoy the complete set of protections as religion or race or gender do, but sometimes love and justice intersect. When the Supreme Court rendered section 2 of DOMA (which permitted states not to recognize same-sex marriages) void on June 26th, 2015, the majority of Americans joined in celebration and song!

Job said, “Adonai gives and Adonai takes away. May the name of Adonai be a source of blessing.” The Christian mystic Meister Eckhart elaborated, “It is permissible to take life’s blessings with both hands, provided thou dost know thyself prepared in the opposite event to take them just as gladly. This applies to food and friends and kindred, to anything God gives and takes away.”

Joy should not be dependent on receiving a particular thing. Anything we receive can be taken away. If we are happy just because we have a new device, are sitting down to a gourmet meal, or are in the company of a good friend, then when our device becomes old, our meal has been consumed, or our friend goes home, our happy feelings will evaporate.

We have an obligation to God and to all who spend time with us, especially our family, to do whatever we need to do to express our lives with a spirit of gratitude and happiness. Pirke Avot (1:15) expresses the simple act of greeting loved ones with a smile as a moral imperative: “Greet every person with a cheerful face!”

When we greet the day with positive energy, we are giving God an offering of happiness. The converse is expressed in the Star Wars Jedi philosophy by ‘Master Yoda:’ “Anger, fear, aggression; the Dark Side of the Force are they.” In organizational life or interpersonal relationships, negativity and despair sap energy. When we live an unhappy or fearful life, we take something away from God.

We can best serve God by striving to live a positive, cheerful life. As Reb Nahman said, “It is a great Mitzvah to be in a constant state of happiness.”

In Kabbalat Shabbat, Psalm 99 is the fifth Psalm, corresponding to Thursday, the fifth day of the week. It also corresponds to Hod, majesty or splendor, the fifth mystical aspect aspect of God 5. Hod also represents the quality of submission. On the fifth day of creation according to Genesis, God created sea creatures and birds.

From my office window, I can often see hawks circling high above the trees. Large birds such as hawks and eagles have a quality of majesty about them. They soar in the air, wings outstretched, as they scan the ground for prey. They instinctive know how to submit to the air currents, riding the air rather than flapping against it. Large sea creatures, such as whales, dolphins, and sharks similarly move through the water with a graceful lack of apparent effort.

Cherubs are winged angels. Thus, our Psalmist is depicting God as riding one of these majestic air creatures, using it as a throne. As Shabbat approaches, we may or may not have finished our work for the week. Yet, Shabbat is a time to set aside the worries and responsibilities that ride on our shoulders during the week, and soar with grace into a different dimension of time.

A bird has built a nest underneath a gutter just outside my kitchen. Early in the evening on Shabbat, I sat on the deck watching the bird sitting in the nest. For an hour, the bird didn’t move from the nest. I don’t know whether the bird was laying eggs or sitting on them, keeping them warm. I have a sense, though, that it was submitting itself to a need larger than itself, the need to grow the next generation. Both the bird and I were enjoying a peaceful Shabbat with no responsibilities other than to sit and breathe.

Filed under: The Embodied Torah of Nature, Theology - The Thought that Drives our Practice Tagged: Psalm Project, Psalms]]>http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/07/06/psalm-99/feed/0Embodied TorahPsalm 98http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/06/29/psalm-98/
http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/06/29/psalm-98/#commentsMon, 29 Jun 2015 12:00:00 +0000https://embodiedtorah.wordpress.com/?p=769Continue reading →]]>Sing to Adonai a new song, for God has worked wonders; God’s right hand, God’s holy arm, has won victory. Adonai has announced victory, God has revealed triumph in the sight of the nations. (98:1-2)

This is the fourth Psalm of Kabbalat Shabbat, corresponding to the fourth day of the week and to the fourth sefirah (mystical aspect of God) known as Netzah – victory or triumph. In Kabbalah, Netzah implied endurance and patience. It’s opposite, which we’ll address next week, is Hod, majesty or splendor, and represents submission.

On the fourth day of creation, God made the lights in the heavens: the sun, moon, and stars. The brightness of the sun may be seen as a symbol of victory in the Biblical story of Joshua calling upon the sun to stand still (ch. 10).

And now for something completely different …

According to the Zohar (1:123a, page 209 in Daniel Matt’s Pritzker Edition) Psalm 98 was sung by cows!

A passage from the Talmud (BT Avodah Zarah 24b) brings up the verse “The cows went straight ahead along the road to Beit Shemesh” (1Sa. 6:12). Since the word “straight ahead” uses letters that also can mean “sing,” the Talmud suggests that the cows sang a song: “The cows sang along the road to Beit Shemesh.” A number of Biblical passages are suggested that might have been sung by cows, but the Zohar chooses Psalm 98. Let’s also note that the story of Joshua calling upon the sun to stand still is described (according to the book of Joshua) in the Book of Yashar (a book which has not be preserved in the Biblical canon). The name Yashar is based on the same word that means “straight ahead.” The name “Beit Shemesh” might be translated, “House of Sun.” The linguistic connections multiply!

The sun is also a metaphor for enlightenment in an intellectual sense. As we recite this Psalm in Kabbalat Shabbat, our meditative kavanah, intention, might focus on the possibility that all of God’s creation, from cows to stars, is part of a glorious song of praise to the Creator. Recall that the mystical aspect of Netzah is patience. We might focus on Wednesday as “hump-day,” the middle of the week when it seems that Shabbat and the weekend will never arrive, and encourage ourselves to patiently work through and appreciate each day of the week for what it brings us.

Filed under: Text Study - The Embodied Torah of Study, The Embodied Torah of Gratitude Tagged: Psalm Project, Psalms]]>http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/06/29/psalm-98/feed/0Embodied TorahPsalm 97http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/06/22/psalm-97/
http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/06/22/psalm-97/#commentsMon, 22 Jun 2015 12:00:00 +0000https://embodiedtorah.wordpress.com/?p=766Continue reading →]]>Mountains melt like wax at Adonai’s presence, at the presence of the One who controls all the earth. The heavens proclaim God’s righteousness and all peoples see God’s glory. (97:5-6)

This is the third Psalm of Kabbalat Shabbat, corresponding to Tuesday. On the third day of the week, God separated the water from the dry land and created plant life. Over the eons of geological time, the Creator melted and shaped the geographical features of the earth – mountains and valleys, hill-country and the great plains, the rain forests and the deserts and the rivers. Each particular climate supports its own set of grasses, trees, flowers, grains, fruits, and vegetables. Together, it makes up the agricultural eco-system of planet earth.

The heavens look down on the bounteous produce and proclaim it “good” and a testament to God’s glory. In the mystical system of the Zohar, heaven is a symbolic reference to the third sefirah of Tiferet, beauty. Tiferet is the mediating characteristic between love and judgment. A parent should not shower either unrestrained, unlimited love or harsh judgmental punishment on a child. Proper parenting is a mixture of both love and judgment, and thus the mystical tradition understands God’s traits as well.

Perhaps we might read Psalm 97 as a meditation on an incomplete but beautiful stage of creation. On the third day, “God saw that [creation] was good” twice, perhaps reflecting the fact that even without animal life, the earth had a kind of beautiful perfection in its incompleteness. As much as we try each week to achieve something meaningful and lasting, we remember the rabbinic dictum from Rabbi Tarfon (Pirkei Avot 2:16), “It’s not your job to finish the work, but you’re not free to walk away from it.”

In Kabbalat Shabbat’s Friday evening trip through the week we might remember that on the second day of creation the upper waters and the lower waters were divided by the sky. The world as we know it begins to take shape, although the dry land doesn’t appear until the third day. Most of the time our world stands firm, although it can and does shake when the vast tectonic plates deep under our feet shift. The firm foundation that the Psalmists speaks of is better understood in spiritual/emotional terms than a physical firmness.

The second of the seven sefirot of of God’s attributes is known as Gevurah (power) or Din (Judgement). Our Psalmist asserts that God judges humanity fairly. There is a steadiness and predictability about the way the world works. Even though we don’t yet have the technology to predict when an earthquakes will occur, we know why they happen and can imagine that someday the tools will exist to predict a shift in the earth’s crust. The same might be said for the suffering which afflicts humanity in this world – we don’t yet have the tools or the will on a large scale to alleviate it completely, so we address it as best we are able.

The most powerful message of this verse is rooted in one of the Jewish principles of theology that moves me most intensely, the idea that our role in the world is to be an imitatio dei, an imitation of God. Just as God feeds the hungry, clothes the naked, buries the dead, and visits the sick (all actions of God found in various midrashim), so we are obligated to take care of others. Just as this attribute of God exercises restraint in the use of power and judgement to judge with equity, so too should we.

While in theory I am in favor of the death penalty, in practice I would prefer that it rarely be used, only in cases where there is absolutely no doubt that the convicted murderer had full capacity to understand what he or she was doing and acted with deliberation.

The history of our system of government can been seen as a struggle between those who want to expand and those who want to restrain the power of the Presidency, Congress, or the Supreme court. Power is not inherently dangerous, but power without humility and restraint is.

The next five Psalms (95 – 99) are the first five Psalms in the Kabbalat Shabbat service. Kabbalah Shabbat is a service created in the mid-16th century by the mystics of the Northern Israeli city of Tzvat (Safed). It is structured around a series of seven Psalms from 95 though 99 followed by Psalm 29, leading up to Psalm 92, titled “A song for the sabbath day.” We might imagine that the progression of seven corresponds to the seven mystical sefirot of God’s attributes from Hesed (love) to Malkhut (Sovereignty), also known as Shekhinah, the Divine Presence, the feminine aspect of God who we welcome as the Shabbat Queen. We might also imagine that each Psalm corresponds to a day of the week from Sunday through Shabbat.

The intention set by this Psalm is Sunday, the first day of the week, and the Divine quality of Hesed. The speaker in our verse is God, exhibiting patience in the presence of a rebellious people. Actually, 40 years is not such a long time in the existence of God. If “A thousand years is like a day in your sight,” (Psalm 90), then 40 years in God’s time is the equivalent of 57 minutes and 36 seconds in human time. So imagine suffering the presence of a very annoying person for 57 minutes and 36 seconds. Imagine listening to him whine and complain about this injustice or that ache and pain, droning on and on, but continuing to pay attention for the full time. Having patience. This is the lesson from our verse. If God can endure something for 40 years without walking away, I can endure something for just under an hour with a loving smile on my face.

On a calendar directed by Shabbat (such as in Israel), Sunday is a workday. It is also a long time until the restful peace of Shabbat returns. For the next six days, we face all of our problems at work and other weekday problems. Psalm 95 reminds us to swallow a loving dose of patience on Sunday to successfully manage the next six days until Shabbat arrives.

Psalm 94 is recited as the Psalm for Wednesday, the fourth day of the week. As with the other Psalms of the day (except for the Psalm for Shabbat), the Talmud posits a connection between this day’s act of creation and something in the Psalm. In this Psalm, the assumption is that those who are in need of punishment for arrogance are those who worship the sun and the moon, created on the fourth day of creation. Arrogant people act as if they are the center of the world, as if the sun and the moon rotate around them.

I find arrogance to be perhaps the ugliest of the negative character traits. It sometimes masquerades as self-confidence, a positive character trait. The difference is that self-confidence is rooted in the essential core of a person’s identity. Confident people have a strong center because they know who they are and understand their abilities and limitations. Humility and self-confidence are symbiotic traits. When they don’t know or understand something or they fail at some task, they are able to admit their deficiency which enables them to learn and grow.

Arrogant people, on the other hand, are not humble. Arrogance is a shell protecting a weak core identity. To admit failure is to admit that their essential nature is weak. To an arrogant person, projecting an image of strength is critical. When they don’t know or understand something, they are more likely to deny or blame to preserve their strong image, rather than show weakness by admitting ignorance.

It’s easy to see why the Psalmist delights in seeing the arrogant receive their comeuppance. Perhaps if they are punished as they deserve, it will be like receiving a dose of humility that will teach them a more pleasant way of relating to others.

Filed under: Midot - The embodied Torah of Character Values]]>http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/06/01/psalm-94/feed/0Embodied TorahDivre Harav/Words from the Rabbi – Summer, 2015http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/05/31/divre-haravwords-from-the-rabbi-summer-2015/
http://embodiedtorah.com/2015/05/31/divre-haravwords-from-the-rabbi-summer-2015/#commentsSun, 31 May 2015 12:00:00 +0000https://embodiedtorah.wordpress.com/?p=730Continue reading →]]>In the almost 125 year history of Congregation Ahavas Israel, many individuals and families have been generous in their financial support of our synagogue. Approximately 25 years ago, Frances Rayden made a significant, unrestricted endowment gift to the synagogue. Recently, Leon Ash has generously offered to match future unrestricted endowment gifts or bequests up to $2 million. We are looking for the next individuals, couples, or families to contribute the next set of gifts to the congregation that will assure our future for the next 125 years. I am grateful to Leon for offering this gift, as well as his wisdom and support as we launch a major endowment campaign this summer.

A synagogue budget covers normal yearly expenses. A synagogue endowment both supports the operating budget (underwriting building, program, and staff expenses) and goes beyond the budget to cover long term support of the building and grounds of the congregation.

Ahavas Israel currently has unrestricted endowment funds totalling approximately $675,000. Our goal over the next ten years is to raise $2 million in endowment funds, matched by Leon Ash’s $2 million, and increase our endowment to $5 million.

Stuart Rapaport and I will be meeting with synagogue members to talk about endowment gifts and planning giving. If you would like to talk about a establishing a fund in memory or in honor of a loved one. Here’s how endowment giving will strengthen Ahavas Israel:

A gift of $1,000,000 could support the Building and Grounds committee, ensuring the long term upkeep of our sacred space. Half of the gift could help fund the maintenance portion of the annual budget, which covers the normal, expected day to day needs of the building and its property. The other half could be used for emergencies or saved for planned major projects.

This gift would strengthen the Ahavas Israel community by:

Funding capital improvements and repairs, such as maintaining the parking lot and replacing the roof.

A gift of $1,000,000 could support the Membership and Religious Life Programming committees, enhancing and expanding our community-building programming. Most of the approximately $50,000 income per year could reduce our dependence of membership dues within the annual budget, thus reducing the cost of membership and making affiliation with Ahavas Israel more affordable. A portion of the income could be given to the Membership Programming Committee and the Religious Life Committee to help build community relationships.

The Membership Programming Committee could strengthen the Ahavas Israel community by:

Arranging for bus trips for Passover Shopping or cultural events in Detroit or Chicago.

Enhancing annual meetings with dinners programs.

Planning annual dinner/dances with entertainment.

The Religious Life Committee could strengthen the Ahavas Israel community by:

Arranging for an extended Kiddush and lunch every week, sitting at tables and extending Shabbat afternoon together.

Offering a small honorarium to authors, rabbis, cantors, and other scholars coming from outside of Grand Rapids for our Shabbat speaker series, expanding the pool of engaging speakers.

Offering a stipend to the GVSU Hillel for them to send students to join our Shabbat morning community to lead junior congregation, help with Shabbat preparation, or just enjoy Shabbat morning services.

Hiring a student rabbi for the summer to run extra programs and study groups and classes.

A gift of $1,000,000 could help to ensure that the congregation enjoys a professionally trained rabbi. The $50,000 a year income would underwrite approximately half of a typical full-time rabbinic package.

This gift would strengthen the Ahavas Israel community by:

Ensuring religious guidance and clergy duties being filled by a Rabbi who knows the needs of the community.

A gift of $500,000 could ensure the long term stability of our Educational Program. The $25,000 annual income would support the United Jewish School, junior congregation, pay salaries for the adult education program, and fully subsidize the expenses for youth group retreats.

A gift of $1,000,000 would also allow us to subsidize or reimburse young families for tuition to the United Jewish School, thus making affiliation with Ahavas Israel more affordable.

This gift would strengthen the Ahavas Israel community by:

Creating and sustaining educational and social opportunities for our young Jewish community members.

Providing financial stability to run the United Jewish School.

A gift of $400,000 could ensure that the congregation can hire a professional cantor for High Holidays and selected other special occasions. The $20,000 annual income would cover the cost of a High Holiday cantor and B’nai mitzvah tutors with a little bit left over for a special music program every couple of years.

This gift would strengthen the Ahavas Israel community by:

Ensuring clergy-led services for large holiday religious events.

Providing performance opportunities that could be open to the Grand Rapids public.